Recording gear advice!

Hey all me and my drummer have saved up about 3500.00 to get into some recording gear! We were thinking of adat but then seen a friends mini disk and thought it was cool! But we want the best sound and also to be able to get a great drum sound so we would like to be able to mic the drums well! So we need a p.a also any advice?

yo, alesis recently dropped the price of the LX20 to around a grand... that may help... their studio-in-a-box was a good package (came with a board and a few other goodies)... put as much as you can into a handful of decent mics.

IMHO Hard Disk recording is light years ahead of any tape based system whether analog or digital.The editing capabilities alone are amazing compared to either cutting analog tape with a razor or copying back and forth between digital machines.Most digital HD machines implement what Roland calls "Virtual Tracks" which are layers of extra tracks (vertical) below each "horizontal" track.My machines have 8 horizontal tracks each plus 15 layers of vertical tracks under each one of those.In real world terms this means that you can do a total of 16 consecutive takes of a guitar solo for example without changing any cables or knobs except to set the next "virtual" track.Nothing comes close as far as capturing the moment is concerned.Oh,did I mention no waiting for the tape to rewind? The sum you mentioned would be enough to get a really nice HD system of 16 tracks with FX and enough left over for some nice mics.

i agree with v.ray on the subject of tape-based digital vs. hard disk... i have a powermac G4 running emu's Paris with 32 dedicated tracks with guaranteed DSP and 999 "virtual" tracks and 24bit analog i/o etc.... i'm not up for starting any wars here, but i think that for the money a paris system is unbeatable. yes, you need the computer, and yes, it's realistically about six grand for the stuff, and so if you only have 3 grand the roland all-in-one units are attractive.

i was just throwing out the option of the adat-based operation. a friend of mine has that and he loves it. he pretty much tracks all his stuff now to the best of his abilities and then takes the tapes to mix elsewhere with an engineer he trusts. it depends what you need. eric had said he also needed p.a. stuff and so i felt that if you were buying a mixer the price of the 20bit adat would fit right in.

Cool i was looking at the adat package from musician friend! Cant wait to get it! My band is basically bass player and drummer! We have played together for about 5 years alone! And ive been playing bass for about 16 years and the drummer has played about 13 years! We love just jamming together! We are very tight now i think its great work to just have the rythem section for a long time without those bothersom guitar players! But me and the drummer wright so many funk ideas we really want to get it on cd! So i take it that every one likes the adat idea better than mini disk! Thats what i thought the thing i really liked about adat is you can stack another unit on top of the first one when you get more money!

yep, reiterating what virtualRay said first, HD systems are way way ahead of minidisc and tape based. period. the Rolad units, for stand alone, are pretty much the best band for the buck out there. check 'em out before you plunk yer money down on the adat. the cool thing about the roland pieces nowadays is that you can get backups of your data pretty easily, which is something that should not be ignored. i've destroyed adat tapes and hard disks and not having a backup of something is either sad or embarassing or both.

I've read a couple of articles about the new yamaha digital mixer and it seems to be pretty good. This would also be able to double for your PA and can even mix straight to CD via the built-in burner (option, though.) It is about $3000USD I think, so I don't how good of an option that is for you. Here is the link for the board:

If you go to this site: www.harmonycentral.com you'll see an article on the home page about a brand new Roland box called the CDX-1.I haven't heard it yet but it looks to be a similar albeit less costly machine to the aforementioned Yamaha.However it only records 2 tracks at a time so maybe you need the 890 or the 1880.

Hey, I just picked up a Tascam 788 HD recorder from Guitar Center. I am sooo glad I picked it up. I've only had it for a week and a half, and haven't had a chance to do more than record basic tracks with it, but I am amazed at how good it sounds, and how easy it is to use. I never bothered with a multitrack before, and I decided to jump feet first into digital and 8 tracks. I got mine for way under a grand with a decent mic, stand, cable, adapter thrown in for free. I'll be getting a cd burner in the next couple of weeks for it to mixdown to. I can't wait.

Cool it all will depend on how well it records drums! Most of the time all the higher end recoders do pretty well with bass and guitar but i will have to record several drum tracks at once! We are a very technical jazz funk band with only a bass player and drummer now! And the drummer is one picky s.o.b!

You're a bit cramped on the mics and cables part of it, although you should be able to get a decent start on mics for the drum kit with that. You'll soon find that for a decent set of mics etc for a band, you'll want to have about $1000 right there, but you'll have a good starting setup with what I've outlined above. Eventually you'll want to spring for some outboard effects (particularly a few good compressors) and probably a good 8bus digital mixer for recording/live stuff... You'll find that you can easily burn through $10-20k setting up a good recording studio.

I'd tend to recommend towards NOT getting an all-in-one unit and have an external mixer instead. It makes it easier to grow, plus you can use the mixer for live work in small clubs as well. Mackie SRM450s plus an unpowered mixer will give you a very good rehearsal/small venue sound system.